Many farm buildings and industrial buildings have track-hung sliding doors with inwardly facing exposed vertical and horizontal frame members, and metal or wood sheathing secured to the outer faces of the frame members. The building may have a single sliding door, or double sliding doors. There must, of course, be enough clearance between the door and the building wall to avoid interference as the door is moved. When such doors are closed there is an undesirable amount of space between the doors and the jamb, and wind may swing such doors in and out. It is very desirable to snug the door or doors against the wall and to snug double sliding doors against each other to reduce drafts, conserve heat, and eliminate objectionable banging of the doors in a wind.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,481,078, owned by applicants' assignee, discloses a device for snugging sliding doors which has enjoyed considerable commercial success that would, however, have been greater except for the relatively high cost of the device.
Applicants' assignee has marketed a toggle type door snugging device which is also relatively objectionable because of its bulk and its cost. In those devices a latch operating lever is pivotally mounted between a pair of upstanding ears, and a latch hook is pivoted on the lever away from the door. With the lever in an elevated position the latch hook is free to be swung in and out of engagement with a bale on the door. Pivotal movement of the lever acts upon the latch hook with a toggle action to pull the hook endwise and thus snug the door.
It is also known to use a hook like a common screen door hook but with the shank of the hook in the form of a turn buckle so the shank may be effectively lengthened and shortened. The sleeve of a turnbuckle hook must be turned with a wrench in order to snug a door.
Finally, Simmons Fastener Co. of Albany, New York, markets, under the name "Hook-Lock," a positive locking device for containers which must be very securely and positively locked under high closing pressure. The Simmons Hook-Lock is similar in principle to the toggle type device previously described, but it consists of two pivotally connected sheet metal elements which are in planes parallel to the mounting surface so as to occupy no more than one-half inch of space forward of said surface. The Simmons Hook-Lock could not be used as a door snugger.